SMSF strategists and financial advisers in general need to demonstrate immediately to prospective clients they possess three key characteristics that will help achieve the person’s wealth goals, according to motivational speaker and bestselling author Jordan Belfort.
“In the first four seconds your client needs to know number one that you’re sharp as a tack. Number two that you’re enthusiastic as hell. And number three that you are an expert in your field,” Belfort told attendees at last week’s NowInfinity Conference 2013 in Hawaii.
“In those first few seconds of the conversation if they don’t realise that about you, you’re done. They’re tuning out already.”
He said it was extremely important for the adviser to let the client know they were an expert in their field.
“Why an expert? Especially in this field, who would you want to manage your money? A moron who just got out of financial school or the person who has been doing it for 25 years, is an expert in managing money and provides value?” he asked.
He warned establishing those three key characteristics would not effectively be achieved through the words the adviser used in conversation with the client.
“The words don’t exist [to create this level of acknowledgement]. We do it with tonality on the phone and in person using tonality and body language,” he said.
“There are certain ways we speak and there are 10 specific human tonalities that influence people on an unconscious level.”
He said it was important to recognise how potential clients assessed people they would potentially do business with.
“They say don’t judge a book by its cover. Who does that? We all do,” he said.
“We instantly make a decision. We take someone, we rip them apart, we take a look at everything we’ve seen, we make our decision in a second, and we put them back together.
“Then we say are they sharp and are they someone to be reckoned with?”
If the three characteristics could be established straightaway, he said it would allow the adviser to control the conversation and generate more business from that point onwards.
